Ormond first appeared on British television in the 1989 serial Traffik, about the illegal heroin trade from the far East to the streets of Europe. The story revolves around Jack Lithgow played by Bill Paterson, a Home Office minister in the UK government engaged in combating heroin importation. Julia Ormond plays his drug addicted daughter Caroline an early role that won glowing reviews. Ormond subsequently appeared in several television films early in her career, such as Young Catherine (1991) and Stalin (1992). In 1993 Ormond made her film debut in the lead role of an international movie, The Baby of Mâcon.[4] In the following year she co-starred with Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall.

Ormond married Rory Edwards in 1988, an actor she had met while performing in a production of Wuthering Heights. The marriage ended in 1994.[12] In 1999, she married political activist Jon Rubin.[12] The couple's child, daughter Sophie, was born in the autumn of 2004.[12] She is no longer married to Rubin.[13]